Why Outlaw Music Will Always Win
From Johnny Cash to XXXTentacion, authority is the antithesis of art
Since we’ve begun recording the history of music, those who have pushed the envelope have endured. In 1786, Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro challenged social conventions by having the intermingling of different classes, yet kings and emperors wanted personal performances. Old sea shanties regale tales of misdeeds and heroes led astray. Revolutions produce some of the greatest music, not the status quo. Clearly, there is something uniquely human about our love to hear the authority of the day challenged. Perhaps its because authority may not truly be natural, or maybe its something too deep for us to easily understand.
If you asked someone who knew me well to come up with a word to describe me, adventurous would be one of the first words used. I have a spirit that yearns for excitement and it explains why someone like me loves listening to Tyler Childers and despises sellouts like Luke Bryan. If I like an artist, odds are they’ll refuse to play it on the radio. Not everyone is like me though, and it bears to mind that the spirit of the outlaw in music has persisted through every era as best as we can tell.
The mainstream that tends to control music in the modern era has adapted to suppress anything that defies the accepted social norms. In early America, the Puritans banned dancing and celebrating. This spirit lived on for a long time. Now, the suppression comes from the corporate world. They would rather overplay a Taylor Swift song about nothing than give airtime to someone questioning authority. Whatever is safest and the most marketable is what gets played now. No matter what the big wigs at radio stations have done, the outlaw has survived. Soundcloud broke the industry’s hegemony just like Johnny Cash took on the radio stations.
Outlaw Country Rises
The country I grew up with is radically different than what the kids today and even my peers grew up with. Now before I sound like an old geezer, I’ll be the first to admit I love Toby Keith, George Strait, Chris Stapleton, and Luke Combs (not everyone who is popular and mainstream is bad). Most of those guys were still a little bit rough around the edges though.
The country I grew up with was filled with artists who were in and out of jail at times. Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings all lived hard lives and paid for it at times. This is not to say going to jail makes you a hero. Sam Hunt getting a DUI certainly doesn’t make him a real country artist. What does is challenging authority on and off the stage. When Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton took up social issues, they did so at great risk to their careers. Their talent was just so immense that they could not be ignored.
This style of country is what took off and made country what it is today. It was carried on to the next era by Bocephus and others like him. At the risk of someone complaining about how things used to be better I will say that in this era the music meant a lot more to people. This isn’t to say this music doesn’t exist now. It just means that you will never find it on your favorite Sirius XM station. Tyler Childers exemplifies outlaw country just as much as Johnny Cash but the corporate lords in Nashville fear their audience having to hear what life in Appalachia is like from someone whose seen the best and worst of it.
In the 90’s and early 2000’s it became clear that an elite in Nashville had seized control. The acceptable number of topics you could sing about were reduced to feel good stories. This change did not only occur in country but it is perhaps the most striking given the origins of Country and Western. In a genre defined by artists taking stands against authority, it has become career suicide to do anything that upsets the apple cart.
Corporate Takeovers and Grunge’s Resistance
Like many industries, music has tended towards monopoly. The three largest labels have 68% of the market share and they tend to snatch up new labels. Throughout this same era, bad deals for artists became increasingly common. Prince suffered from a bad record deal and recently Lil Uzi Vert suffered through one as well. As Rock and Roll became mainstream, the record labels seized the opportunity to exert control.
Labels and radio stations controlled an artist’s means of income. If they colluded to remove you from the airwaves then you would be relegated to obscurity. This allowed for a level of control over their talent. They still liked the big personalities that brought in money but they did not want them making forays into politics or sensitive topics. Mötley Crüe was tolerable but Rage Against the Machine was impermissible.
Just as always, there were signs of resistance. Despite the massive success and popularity of Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana, they constantly pushed the envelope. He talked about issues that no label wanted to be near, he wore a dress to an interview, and he constantly trashed the higher ups in the industry. Nowadays, this might not seem as audacious but that’s only because our culture has changed drastically. The industry hated him and what he stood for. His defiance may have been a blip on the radar in terms of time but there’s a reason you see people wear Nirvana shirts now and not Justin Timberlake ones. The music industry would only tighten its grip as time went on, but the technological revolution of the 2010’s would blindside them just like it did to so many other industries.
Soundcloud and Rap’s Resilience
The ultimate challenge to the music industry has always been rap. It lives as the most ‘outlaw’ music there is. Just to get into the club, 6IX9INE paid his way into a gang he had no business being in. The gates are well maintained and for a long time mainstream music wanted to keep rap as a separate entity. There was no way they would allow NWA’s “Fuck Tha Police” to get on the radio.
Rap continued to grow in popularity. It was irreverent and stunningly real. Eventually, the music industry realized that they were missing too much profit and that culture had shifted enough for it to be acceptable. Slowly features began to occur and some artists found their way out of being damned off the radio. For rappers who had made it, standards of conduct were somewhat forced. Just like the rockstars of the previous generation, only so much could be done to rein them in. Right before the advent of Soundcloud the industry had begun to get a better hold on things. Non-offensive artists like Drake were a dream for the music industry but a paradigm shift soon occurred.
Just as Uber and Airbnb upended their respective industries, Soundcloud took a sledgehammer to the status quo of the music industry. The middleman had been cut out completely. The revolution in rap is what first got me interested in the genre. The first rap I ever listened to was Chief Keef and Lor Scoota, not the normal answer of Lil Wayne for someone my age. I immediately fell in love with it because I realized that it recaptured a spirit that had been lost in modern music.
Some of today’s household names became superstars without having to sell their soul to a label off the bat. XXXTentacion, Lil Uzi, and Trippie Redd became overnight sensations on Soundcloud. Just as the industry had set a standard for their artists to be like Drake they were immediately challenged. The rappers who come up are still not the polished product the industry wants. Many exude the outlaw music they create and stick out as a direct challenge to the authority of industry executives.
Every time it seems as if outlaw music has died, it finds a way to resurface. As the Soundcloud era comes to a close, its almost a certainty that the industry will find a way to rein in artists like they have in every other genre. Its also a certainty that there will be another breakthrough and challenge to this corporate authority. People yearn for excitement, not regurgitated products. Newton’s 3rd Law seems to even apply to the music industry. For every centralizing action of authority, there will be an equal opposite reaction against it.
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